Thursday, April 26, 2012

There are five-string cellos, and there are left-handed cellists, Charlie Chaplin among them. And there may be, somewhere, a left-handed five-string cellist. But come on.

If there is an in-joke here, it remains very inner. To the average comics reader, or to me, today’s Hi and Lois will look merely goofy. I made a few improvements in about fiveseven ten minutes, using the open-source Mac image-editor Seashore. Nothing to be done about those F-holes though. Skritch.

Yeah, it seems to me that the artist is simply not familiar enough with stringed insturments (I play the Viola, so my musical neighbors are 'Cellos). Elaine Fine is right that the bow seems backwards, among the many other errors. To be fair, when a student is first learning a stringed instrument, it DOES tend to sound like someone is murdering a cat. The strip might have been funnier, though, if the "terrible sound" had come from somewhere off-stage, and the boy spent a panel or two searching the house, trying to resolve the mystery before the truth is revealed.

“Orange Crate Art” is a song by Van Dyke Parks and the title of a 1995 album by Van Dyke Parks and Brian Wilson. “Orange Crate Art” is for me one of the great American songs: “Orange crate art was a place to start.”

Don’t look for premiums orcoupons, as the cost ofthe thoughts blended inORANGE CRATE ART pro-hibits the use of them.